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Book Cover
E-book
Author Garrett-Scott, Shennette, author.

Title Banking on freedom : black women in U.S. finance before the New Deal / Shennette Garrett-Scott
Published New York : Columbia University Press, 2019

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 273 pages) : illustrations
Series Columbia studies in the history of U.S. capitalism
Columbia studies in the history of U.S. capitalism.
Contents Introduction -- "I am yet waitin" : African American women and free labor banking experiments in the emancipation-era South, 1860s-1900 -- "Who is so helpless as the Negro woman?" : the independent order of St. Luke and the quest for economic security, 1856-1902 -- "Let us have a bank" : St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, economic activism, and state regulation, 1903 to World War I -- Rituals of risk and respectability : gendered economic practices, credit, and debt to World War I -- "A good, strong, hustling woman" : financing the new Negro in the new era, 1920-1929 -- Epilogue
Summary Shennette Garrett-Scott explores black financial innovation and its transformative impact on U.S. capitalism through the story of the St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women. Banking on Freedom offers an unparalleled account of how black women carved out economic, social, and political power
Between 1888 and 1930, African Americans opened more than a hundred banks and thousands of other financial institutions. In Banking on Freedom, Shennette Garrett-Scott explores this rich period of black financial innovation and its transformative impact on U.S. capitalism through the story of the St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women. Banking on Freedom offers an unparalleled account of how black women carved out economic, social, and political power in contexts shaped by sexism, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation. Garrett-Scott chronicles both the bank's success and the challenges this success wrought, including extralegal violence and aggressive oversight from state actors who saw black economic autonomy as a threat to both democratic capitalism and the social order. The teller cage and boardroom became sites of activism and resistance as the leadership of president Maggie Lena Walker and other women board members kept the bank grounded in meeting the needs of working-class black women. The first book to center black women's engagement with the elite sectors of banking, finance, and insurance, Banking on Freedom reveals the ways gender, race, and class shaped the meanings of wealth and risk in U.S. capitalism and society
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-266) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Women in finance -- United States -- History
African American bankers -- History
African American women -- History
Women bankers -- United States -- History
African American banks -- History
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Finance.
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Economic History.
African American bankers
African American banks
African American women
Women bankers
Women in finance
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780231545211
0231545215